Friday, October 31, 2008

Sweet Potato Pie (Gluten Free)

One of my favorite things about fall is sweet potatoes. In eastern NC, sweet potatoes are a huge cash crop. The first 3 years that Michael and I were married our home was surrounded by fields. The crops were rotated every fall, but at least two years sweet potatoes were grown. After the primary crops were taken from the fields we gleaned the leftover sweet potatoes. It was such a blessing!

I can't tell you how many sweet potatoes we ate during those years! I can tell you that I made many a sweet potato pie!

We still live in a very rural area and our back yard faces soybean fields. While we no longer have sweet potato fields to glean, thankfully they are a local food that can be bought frugally.

For Thanksgiving this year I will be bringing this pie to my Aunt Linda's house. Sweet potatoes are such an easy vegetable to cook that it's a snap to make this pie!

I actually prefer the taste of sweet potato pie to pumpkin. I hope you will try it this year and tell me what you think!

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a small bowl combine all spices with sugar. In a large bowl beat eggs lightly. Add mashed sweet potatoes and sugar/spice mixture to eggs. Mix together thoroughly. Gradually add in evaporated milk. Pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake for 15 minutes in preheated 425 degree oven. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 40-50 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool completely before serving.

12 comments:

I've never eaten sweet potato pie. Can you believe it?! Pumpkin pie isn't my favorite so I should give this one a try. My MIL loves this kind, too, so maybe I should make one for Thanksgiving if we head Down East this year!

Abby -- I hope you will try this pie, although I think if you generally do not like pumpkin pie, you may not like this either, but I don't know! I just love pie! lol And I love sweet potatoes! I hope you'll give it a shot! I hope you are doing well!

Lovesgarlic -- YES, you can glean fields for the remnants of MANY types of crops. You need permission from the owner of the field of course, but generally for crops like sweet potatoes, stores only want a certain shape and size of potato. So any potatoes that are too small, too skinny, are wierd shapes etc... get left behind in the field and will just be plowed under. I cannot tell you how many crops are literally wasted in fields in each year. And people go hungry. There are great organizations like The Society of St. Andrews, that makes a point to contact land owners and glean these fields so food is not wasted and they give it to soup kitchens, homeless shelters, etc... If you know of any type of food crop in your area, you can ask local owners if they allow gleaning after the crops have been harvested! The years we lived behind sweet potato fields we literally gleaned hundreds of pounds of sweet potatoes. (We shared them with friends, took them to church, etc...) It's a great service ministry to look into if you are interested!

When I grew gourmet produce for chefs, I used to have a farmer's market for the "oddballs" and extras. Most of the people who came to buy produce were friends of mine. It was a fun venture! I don't believe in wasting anything.

I just read on your other blog that your dear great grandmother died. So sorry for your loss. I'll write you a letter every month, if it will cheer you. I always get excited to see a hand-addressed envelope in my mailbox, with a familiar return address. They are few and far between these days. I like the feel of paper and the comfort of familiar handwriting.

I think this is so cool, I'm making my first sweet potato pie this year for my mom who is gluten intolerant. I found your site while googling for recipes. I picked up a pie crust at Whole Foods when I saw they had gluten-free ones. Mom says the thing she misses most at Thanksgiving is pie.

Elithir -- I would use coconut milk in place of the evaporated milk! You could certainly bake it without a crust without problems. You could also make an "impossible" pie that bakes it's own crust by simply adding 1/2 cup of rice flour + 1 teaspoon of baking powder to the sweet potato pudding ingredients!